New, large banner ads are being tested by Google in the US market, apparently breaking a 2005 promise by the company.
Synrgy

Nearly eight years ago, Google's then-vice president of search products and user experience, Marissa Mayer, wrote a blog post saying that the company would never run banner ads in search results or on the Google home page.

"There will be no banner ads on the Google homepage or Web search results pages. There will not be crazy, flashy, graphical doodads flying and popping up all over the Google site. Ever," Mayer wrote, as part of a response to a search deal with AOL.

A Google spokesperson said the experiment was running only in the US market, and described it to CNET as "very limited."

It is possible that Google sees the test not as contravening that 2005 promise, but as an expansion of the image sizes available to advertisers that it began to run in search ads over the summer. The practice could call into question what constitutes a banner ad: Are banner ads any ad that stretches the width of the Web site, or are they limited to short, wide ads that contain "crazy, flashy, graphical doodads"?

Whatever Google's intentions with the ads, its lack of a forthright answer about what it is doing with them won't win the company any brownie points.

Updated at 2:04 p.m. PT: with statement from Google and additional information.

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Senior writer Seth Rosenblatt covered Google and security for CNET News, with occasional forays into tech and pop culture. Formerly a CNET Reviews senior editor for software, he has written about nearly every category of software and app available.
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